In mail preparation, a mailer prepares a mailpiece or a series of mailpieces for delivery to a recipient by a carrier service such as the United States Postal Service or other postal service or a private carrier delivery service. The carrier services, upon receiving or accepting a mailpiece or a series of mailpieces from a mailer, processes the mailpiece to prepare it for physical delivery to the recipient. Payment for the postal service or private carrier delivery service may be made by means of value metering devices such as postage meters. In systems of this type, the user prints an indicia, which may be a digital token or other evidence of payment on the mailpiece or on a tape that is adhered to the mailpiece. The postage metering systems print and account for postage and other unit value printing such as parcel delivery service charges and tax stamps.
These postage meter systems involve both prepayment of postal charges by the mailer (prior to postage value imprinting) and post payment of postal charges by the mailer (subsequent to postage value imprinting). Prepayment meters employ descending registers for securely storing value within the meter prior to printing whole post payment (current account) meters employ ascending registers account for value imprinted. Postal charges or other terms referring to postal or postage meter or meter system as used herein should be understood to mean charges for either postal charges, tax charges, private carrier charges, tax service or private carrier service, as the case may be, and other value metering systems, such as certificate metering systems such as is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application of Cordery, Lee, Pintsov, Ryan and Weiant, Ser. No. 08/518,404, filed Aug. 21, 1995, for SECURE USER CERTIFICATION FOR ELECTRONIC COMMERCE EMPLOYING VALUE METERING SYSTEM assigned to Pitney Bowes, Inc. Mail pieces as used herein includes both letters of all types and parcels of all types.
Some of the varied types of postage metering systems are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,978,457 for MICRO COMPUTERIZED ELECTRONIC POSTAGE METER SYSTEM, issued Aug. 31, 1976; U.S. Pat. No. 4,301,507 for ELECTRONIC POSTAGE METER HAVING PLURAL COMPUTING SYSTEMS, issued Nov. 17, 1981; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,579,054 for STAND ALONE ELECTRONIC MAILING MACHINE, issued Apr. 1, 1986. Moreover, the other types of metering systems have been developed which involve different printing systems such as those employing thermal printers, ink jet printers, mechanical printers and other types of printing technologies. Examples of some of these other types of electronic postage meters are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,168,533 for MICROCOMPUTER MINIATURE POSTAGE METER, issued Sep. 18, 1979; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,493,252 for POSTAGE PRINTING APPARATUS HAVING A MOVABLE PRINT HEAD AN A PRINT DRUM, issued Jan. 15, 1985. These systems enable the postage meter to print variable information, which may be alphanumeric and graphic type information.
Postage metering systems have also been developed which employ encrypted information on a mailpiece. The postage value for a mailpiece may be encrypted together with the other data to generate a digital token. A digital token is encrypted information that authenticates the information imprinted on a mailpiece such as postage value. Examples of postage metering systems which generate and employ digital tokens are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,757,537 for SYSTEM FOR DETECTING UNACCOUNTED FOR PRINTING IN A VALUE PRINTING SYSTEM, issued Jul. 12, 1988; U.S. Pat. No. 4,831,555 for SECURE POSTAGE APPLYING SYSTEM, issued May 15, 1989; U.S. Pat. No. 4,775,246 for SYSTEM FOR DETECTING UNACCOUNTED FOR PRINTING IN A VALUE PRINTING SYSTEM, issued Oct. 4, 1988; U.S. Pat. No. 4,725,718 for POSTAGE AND MAILING INFORMATION APPLYING SYSTEMS, issued Feb. 16, 1988. These systems, which may utilize a device termed a Postage Evidencing Device (PED) or Postal Security Device (PSD), employ an encryption algorithm to encrypt selected information to generate the digital token. The encryption of the information provides data integrity to prevent altering of the printed information in a manner such that any change in a postal revenue block is detectable by appropriate verification procedures.
Encryption systems have also been proposed where accounting for postage payment occurs at a time subsequent to the printing of the postage. Systems of this type are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,796,193 for POSTAGE PAYMENT SYSTEM FOR ACCOUNTING FOR POSTAGE PAYMENT OCCURS AT A TIME SUBSEQUENT TO THE PRINTING OF THE POSTAGE AND EMPLOYING A VISUAL MARKING IMPRINTED ON THE MAILPIECE TO SHOW THAT ACCOUNTING HAS OCCURRED, issued Jan. 3, 1989; U.S. Pat. No. 5,293,319 for POSTAGE METERING SYSTEM, issued Mar. 8, 1994; and, U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,172, for POSTAGE PAYMENT SYSTEM EMPLOYING ENCRYPTION TECHNIQUES AND ACCOUNTING FOR POSTAGE PAYMENT AT A TIME SUBSEQUENT TO THE PRINTING OF THE POSTAGE, issued Dec. 20, 1994.
Other postage payment systems have been developed not employing encryption. Such a system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,391,562 for SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PURCHASE AND APPLICATION OF POSTAGE USING PERSONAL COMPUTER, issued Feb. 21, 1995. This patent describes a systems where end-user computers each include a modem for communicating with a computer and a postal authority. The system is operated under control of a postage meter program which causes communications with the postal authority to purchase postage and updates the contents of the secure non-volatile memory. The postage printing program assigns a unique serial number to every printed envelope and label, where the unique serial number includes a meter identifier unique to that end user. The postage printing program of the user directly controls the printer so as to prevent end users from printing more that one copy of any envelope or label with the same serial number. The patent suggests that by capturing and storing the serial numbers on all mailpieces, and then periodically processing the information, the postal service can detect fraudulent duplication of envelopes or labels. In this system, funds are accounted for by and at the mailer site. The mailer creates and issues the unique serial number which is not submitted to the postal service prior to mail entering the postal service mail processing stream. Moreover, no assistance is provided to enhance the deliverability of the mail beyond current existing systems.
Another system not employing encryption of the indicium is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,612,889 for MAIL PROCESSING SYSTEM WITH UNIQUE MAILPIECE AUTHORIZATION ASSIGNED IN ADVANCE OF MAILPIECES ENTERING CARRIER SERVICE MAIL PROCESSING STREAM.
As can be seen from the references noted above, various postage meter designs may include electronic accounting systems which may be secured within a meter housing or smart cards or other types of portable accounting systems.
Recently, the United States Postal Service has published proposed draft specifications for future postage payment systems, including the Information Based Indicium Program (IBIP) Indicium Specification dated Jun. 13, 1996 and the Information Based Indicia Program Postal Security Device Specification dated Jun. 13, 1996. These are Specifications disclosing various postage payment techniques including various types of secure accounting systems that may be employed, as for example, a single chip module, multi chip module, and multi chip stand alone module (See for example, Table 4.6-1 PSD Physical Security Requirements, Page 4--4 of the Information Based Indicia Program Postal Security Device Specification).
The use of encrypted indicia involve the use of various verification techniques to insure that the indicia is valid. This may be implemented via machine reading the indicia and subsequent validation. Alternatively, the encrypted indicia data may be human readable and thereafter manually entered into a computing system for validation. The nature of the validation process requires the retrieval of sufficient data to execute the validation process. A problem with validation exists, however, when the encrypted indicia is defective such that sufficient data necessary for the validation process cannot be obtained either by machine or human reading. This is a case where data available to the verifying party is insufficient for validation of the indicium. Accordingly, a decision must be made as how to further process such mail, either to reject the mail piece or to place the mail piece in the mail delivery stream. A similar situation exists of verifiable (non-encrypted) indicia which are printed by various metering systems. In such systems, the imprinted indicia is verifiable so long as certain indicia characteristics are legible as, for example, tels intention included in the indicia. In such case, the imprinted indicia, if legible, can be compared to stored indicia specimens for the meter system.